vanessa@tumblr

[barcarole]

Galina Ulanova coaching Nikolai Tsiskaridze for Narcissus, photos by Mikhail Logvinov.

[theparisreview]

“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”

Sadie Stein on the context behind her favorite line of Emily Dickinson’s.

[theparisreview]

Happy November.

[vanessafabiano]

Azazello snorted, but Behemoth was insistent and demanded not one but two revolvers. Azazello drew another pistol from his left hip pocket and with a sarcastic grin handed them both to the cat. Two pips on the card were selected. The cat took a long time to prepare, then turned its back on the cushion. Margarita sat down with her fingers in her ears and stared at the owl dozing on the mantelpiece. Behemoth fired from both revolvers, at which there came a yelp from Hella, the owl fell dead from the mantelpiece and the clock stopped from a bullet in its vitals. Hella, one finger bleeding, sank her nails into the cat's fur. Behemoth in retaliation clawed at her hair and the pair of them rolled on the floor in a struggling heap. A glass fell off the table and broke.

The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov

[vanessafabiano]

#soviet #literature

[vanessafabiano]

Sleeping Beauty 1964, Dudinskaia, Makarova, Sizova

[vanessafabiano]

Soyuz landing, expedition 42 

[vanessafabiano]

Alla Osipenko, John Markovsky #Kirov

[vanessafabiano]

#reads #Master i Margarita.

[vanessafabiano]

Check out this reading list Happy Chinese New Year on Wattpad http://w.tt/1o9bK3T

[vanessafabiano]

Vintage: historic photos of City Life of Shanghai (1900-1939)

Collection of historic photos of City Life of Shanghai (between 1900 and 1939).

A trove of truly amazing photos. wow. I wish I’d taken more pictures of architecture when I was living in Hunan Lu in the early 2000s, but I generally don’t photograph much and have zero talent in that department.

[vanessafabiano]

Another story cover. This story is a favorite of mine, but I’m still revising. It’s about ballet and friendship and war. And rivalry. Loosely inspired by the lives of ballerinas Margot Fonteyn (aka Peggy Hookham) and Vera Volkova.

[vanessafabiano]

Pre-civil war Damascus. A restaurant in 2009. 

[vanessafabiano]

Shanghai sometime in 2002?

[vanessafabiano]

Shanghai's clocks were set an hour ahead so the city could save daylight, but the Bai family said: We go by the old clock. Ten o'clock to them was eleven to everyone else. Their singing was behind the beat, they couldn't keep up with the huqin of life.

Eileen Chang, Love in a Fallen City

[vanessafabiano]

"I have never done anything fast, and yet I have always arrived on time.”

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Perigord

[vanessafabiano]

CHINESE ON THE BEACH

Noel and Frederique escape congested Beijing in search of the sky and a connection, but end up marooned on New Year's Eve in a second-rate resort town.

This story is now LIVE. 

[vanessafabiano]

God creates, I do not create. I assemble and I steal everywhere to do it - from what I see, from what the dancers can do, from what others do.

George Balanchine